“Some. I wonder if I’ll ever feel normal again.”
“Hopefully. The police who responded to your accident tell me you kept insisting that someone had tampered with the brakes on your van. Have you been keeping the garage locked?”
“Usually,” Dylan said. “It didn’t seem as necessary during the day when we were at home and I guess I forgot to check last night. That door’s too heavy for my wife to handle by herself and when my arm was still real sore I had trouble with it, too.”
“I’ll make a note of that and get the problem corrected.” Phillips said. “What else can you tell me?”
“Not a whole lot. It’s been quiet except for the freak accident at the warehouse store where I work.”
“Accident? When?”
“A week or so ago. That’s what I meant when I told you I’d called. Marshal Trier, the same guy who escorted us to Texas, took my report. He said not to worry unless something more happened.” Dylan pulled a face. “Does landing in the hospital and having some lowlife come after me here, too, count?”
“I’d say so.” Phillips was apparently paging through digital files on his palm-size phone. “I don’t seem to see that particular report.”
“Well, I made one. And I told that same marshal about a motorcyclist who tried to run me down when we first got to Houston.”
“Were you sure the biker was after you?”
“No.” Dylan shrugged as best he could while still strapped down. “But it sure seemed like it at the time.”
The appearance of a doctor and two regular nurses caused the marshal to step to one side.
“Are you going to spring me?” Dylan asked the doctor.
“That’s the plan. I’ll make an appointment for you with a neurologist, just in case. Feel free to cancel it if you don’t have any more symptoms, like headaches or dizziness.” He shined a penlight into Dylan’s eyes, making them water. “Looks good to me. I’ll sign you out. Do you have a ride home?”
“I’ll take him,” Phillips said flatly. He was concentrating on the information on his phone and watching the lobby at the same time. “My backup just got here. They can take care of the prisoner for me and explain everything to the police.”
The physician arched an eyebrow. “Police?”
“It’s a long story,” Dylan told him with a sigh and a visible wince.
“Your ribs may bother you for a while,” the doctor said. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s broken. I wouldn’t do any diving off a high board for a while. Stuff like that. Otherwise, you should do well.”
“Thanks, Doc.” He let the nurses help him raise his upper body, then swung his legs over the side of the gurney until he was sitting on the edge of it.
“Has somebody checked on my wife and kids? Grace must be frantic,” Dylan said as soon as he caught his breath well enough to speak through the pain.
“They’re at home and the local police are keeping an eye on them for us. You can use my phone to call from here if you want. I’ll take you to them as soon as you’re checked out. How do you really feel?”
Dylan made a face and looked the man straight in the eyes as he said, “Vulnerable.”
SIXTEEN
Frantic, Grace had kept the line to the hospital open until it had gone dead. Then she had paced and fretted until Dylan had called to reassure her. She did appreciate the effort, even though her jangled nerves insisted she’d have to see him in person before she’d totally believe he was okay.
The kids spotted their daddy arriving home before Grace did. Squealing with delight, all three barreled out the front door and dashed up to him while she stood back, assessing the man who had escorted Dylan. There was no doubt another marshal had brought him. The familiar demeanor and dress code said it all. So did the fact that her police watchdog was leaving.
When Dylan’s gaze met hers and he began to smile, she was nearly overcome. The most amazing facet of their current relationship was how vitally important he had become to her. Whenever they were apart she yearned to be reunited, and when they were, she could not get enough of him. She might have likened it to their first love if a much deeper sentiment had not been involved. His presence both calmed and elated her, giving her the feeling that their hearts and minds had always been joined.
Descending the porch stairs, Grace approached Dylan, then paused while he continued to greet the children. When he straightened and took a step toward her she realized that nothing in the universe could stop her from falling into his arms and embracing him.
Dylan accepted the show of affection without hesitation. As he held her close he whispered, “It’s okay, Gracie. I’m fine.”
Although she had to force the words she managed to admit, “I’m not. I was so...so afraid.” Her breath shuddered. “When I heard the phone hit the floor and you yelled in the background, I thought my heart was going to burst.”
He was gently rubbing his wife’s back, murmuring to her, when the marshal broke the mood. “Time to go inside, folks. We’re sitting ducks out here.”
Dylan loosened his hold on her and gestured. “Sorry. Grace, meet Marshal Colton Phillips, from Denver.”
“Denver?” She made a face. “Whatever. It can’t be any stranger than the other things that have been happening around here.”
“We need to discuss all that,” Dylan said. “In the house where it’s safe.”
Grace quickly reverted to her role as a parent and shooed her brood toward the front door. Dylan and the marshal followed.
Once the door was closed and locked, she felt like a party balloon with a pinhole leak, slowly and inexorably deflating. If she had ever been this weary, this totally spent before, she didn’t know when. Even during the birth of her children, which had been a physical challenge of course, she hadn’t been nearly this emotionally drained.
“Can I get anybody some iced tea? Coffee? Lemonade?”
Both men politely declined while the children began to clamor for a snack.
“If you two will excuse me, I’ll take the kids over to the other side of the house and feed them there so we can talk. Be back in a minute.”
The last thing she intended was for the children to listen while Dylan and the marshal discussed what had happened, both at the accident scene and at the hospital. What little her husband had told her when he’d finally phoned to explain the latest attempt on his life was plenty.
Obviously someone had discovered where they were hiding. That was a given. Two questions were critical. How had their cover been blown and what could they possibly do to keep it from happening again, no matter where they were sent?
Mulling it over caused Grace to recall her failure to contact Miranda Smithfield, as promised. While she was cutting up an apple and washing grapes for her kids she made up her mind to follow through with that vow, even if it was now a moot point. She didn’t believe for one second that the wealthy woman would have connections to criminals who might care about a family in witness protection, yet asking who the politicians in her family were could rule them out. That was important, too.
As soon as she rejoined the men in Dylan’s side of the duplex she mentioned her plan.
“We could have taken care of that for you if you’d asked,” Marshal Phillips told her. “It would have been smart to clear the family with us, anyway.” He huffed. “Since you’ve already made contact, I supposed you may as well give the woman a call and find out the easy way.”
Settling herself on the sofa while the men relaxed in armchairs and conversed quietly, Grace got out the number and placed the call.
She began to smile when Miranda answered politely.
“Hello! This is Mary Grace Appleby. I’m just calling to thank you again for your hospitality.”
“Not at all.”
Grace immediately sensed something off-pu
tting about the other woman’s tone. It was almost as if she’d flipped a switch and turned coldly unfriendly as soon as Grace had identified herself.
“Well, Beth and I had a lovely time.”
“That’s nice.”
Okay. It was official. Miranda was not happy to hear from her. What had changed? They had seemed to be getting along splendidly twenty-four hours ago. Had the well-to-do woman simply decided to stop slumming? Or could her change of heart be due to the wildly imaginative stories the girls had exchanged?
At this point, Grace didn’t see how she was going to bring up the subject of Miranda’s Missouri relatives without sounding too nosy so she held back. One look at Dylan’s and the marshal’s expression told her they had picked up on her confusion.
“Well, I won’t bother you further. I just wanted to express my thanks.”
It was not a big surprise when Miranda hung up abruptly.
“Whew! That was strange.” Frowning, Grace gazed at her husband while the marshal began speaking on his own cell. “Until just now I’d thought she and I might become friends.”
Colton Phillips had risen and paced across the room. When he ended his phone call, he faced the couple. Grace could tell he was not happy. Well, that made three of them.
“Miranda Smithfield’s maiden name was Simms,” he announced, staring straight at Dylan.
Grace saw color draining from her husband’s face.
“Simms?” Dylan’s jaw dropped. “Is her father a judge?”
Phillips shook his head. “No. Her dad is Congressman Peter Simms. Her uncle Simon is the Judge Simms you’ve dealt with.”
Grace gasped and covered her mouth. “You know him?”
“Unfortunately.” Dylan was slowly nodding. “If Miranda happened to mention our three red-haired children and what Beth said about stolen babies, it would have been fairly easy for somebody back in Missouri to figure out who we were.”
“And to send an assassin after you,” the marshal said flatly. He turned his back and made another call.
Grace’s gaze met Dylan’s. “Do you really think that’s how they found us?”
“It has to be. Judge Simms was the one who signed off on the shaky adoptions I handled. I’d thought he was just another gullible do-gooder, like me, but I may have been mistaken.”
“What about the congressman? Do you think he’s involved?”
“I strongly doubt he’d take a chance like that and jeopardize his political career. Of course, he may have simply mentioned it to his brother and the judge told somebody else, and so on. Their family connections to Beth’s little friend aren’t proof of criminal intent.”
“Spoken like a lawyer,” Grace said dryly. “Off the record, counselor, what do you think?”
Dylan’s brow furrowed as he cast a furtive glance at the marshal. “Personally? I think we’d better start packing.”
* * *
“I have orders to return to Denver ASAP. There will be a black-and-white on the street until Summers and McCall get here. They’re on their way,” Marshall Phillips announced. “They’ve been talking to my old boss, Hunter Davis, and they’ll have a few new questions for you when they get here.”
“They’re coming to Houston?” Dylan asked. “What about the Missouri connection we just discovered? Who’s going to look into that?”
“Rest assured that somebody will. We’re trying to coordinate our efforts to avoid wasting time by duplicating tasks. One of the reasons the office here in Texas was so willing to send me to assist you is that I was involved with the FBI in locating one of the stolen babies.”
“That case is tied to those adoptions I handled, too?” Dylan felt as if there was a three-hundred-pound boulder lying in his stomach. “Unbelievable.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I wish I had my old files. They were filled with pictures of those poor kids.”
“Without doing an age-progression, they’d probably be too vague for an ID by now, anyway.” The marshal poked at his cell phone, then held it out to display the image of a blond toddler. “Here’s a picture of the baby I helped rescue. Cute little thing, isn’t she?”
“Yes.” Dylan answered out of politeness, barely glancing at the picture. If only he had questioned more, had listened to his conscience when it kept insisting that something about his assignments was terribly wide of the mark.
Part of the problem was that his choice of the law as a career had been made for the wrong reasons. He could see that now. He’d been chasing prestige and a high salary when he should have been seeking fulfillment and contentment.
Would a younger Grace have even looked at him twice if he had not had grandiose plans for his future? Probably not. However, she was no longer the same person she’d been back then and neither was he. They might legally be husband and wife but they were very different people than they had been twelve years ago.
Recognizing that, Dylan came to the conclusion that it was not going to be enough to merely try to renew their former relationship. They were going to have to get to know each other much better, to perhaps eventually fall in love again, assuming they were still suited to each other. God willing, they would be, because he could not imagine any life without her—and his children.
* * *
Choosing what to pack was much easier this time. Grace figured she could cram everything important into the suitcase she’d arrived with, except for a couple pairs of cheap sandals she’d bought to wear in the warmer weather of the Texas gulf coast. They’d already had daytime temperatures near ninety, and it was only May. No telling how hot the summer would be.
That notion made her smile wryly. It no longer mattered to her how hot it got in Houston. She wasn’t going to be there long enough to suffer in the heat. The thing that did surprise her was her willingness to pack up and move on. It seemed as if the first move had loosened the ties to her former home and other material possessions, leaving her freer to follow whatever path the Lord set for her and her family. They were the truly important things, not the stuff hanging in their closets or the money in the bank accounts.
Beth entered the bedroom, saw Grace pulling clothing off hangers and ran wailing down the hall to tell her brothers. Kyle was the first of the children to return and confront his mother.
“What are you doing?”
“Packing,” Grace said calmly. “We’re going to have to move again. We have no choice. If you want to help, you can find your brother’s backpack and start filling it for him.”
“Are we going home?”
“This is our home now. At least it was. I doubt we’ll ever go back to St. Louis, if that’s what you mean.”
“Well, I will.”
Before Grace could reply, the boy had wheeled and stomped off, leaving his siblings standing in the doorway. Beth was crying. Brandon looked more confused than upset.
“Beth, honey, go fetch your daddy for me, will you? Tell him I need his help with something. Okay?”
The child sniffed, nodded and disappeared.
“Brandon, how about you go pick out your favorite toy? That’s a good boy. And don’t let Kyle bug you. He’s mad at me, not at you.”
She was alone and chewing on her lower lip when Dylan appeared.
“What’s up?” He eyed the messy piles on the bed. “You packing already?”
“Better me than the marshals,” she countered. “It’s Kyle I’m worried about. He’s having a hissy fit over this new move. I think you should go talk to him. I tried to explain but he wasn’t in the mood to listen.”
Dylan heaved a long sigh. “Not surprising. I’m all grown-up and it’s not to my liking, either. I can’t imagine how disastrous this situation feels to him, particularly since we haven’t shared much background information.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Kids pick up a lot more than we t
hink they do. Look at Beth.”
“True.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Okay. I’ll go talk to him. Which way was he headed?”
“To his room. Should I come along?”
“No. I’ll give a shout if he hog-ties me and stuffs me in the closet,” Dylan quipped. “Otherwise, I think I can handle one grouchy ten-year-old.”
Grace was still smiling when he turned away and started down the hall. No matter how dire a circumstance was, Dylan always seemed able to find the lighthearted side of it, even if he had to make up something crazy, the way he had just now. That was one of the things she loved about him. One of many things, she reminded herself.
In the distance she heard him calling “Kyle” over and over. Finally he returned to her room.
Grace stood stock-still, staring at the distress on her husband’s face. “You didn’t find him?”
“No.” His brow knit. “He could be hiding. We’d better both look.”
Heart pounding, she threw aside the blouse she’d been folding and went with Dylan. “The other kids can help. They’re more likely to find him than we are since it’s us he’s upset with.”
“Right.”
Mustering their forces, such as they were, Grace and Dylan assigned the two younger children to poking through closets and small hiding places while the parents ventured into the yard.
“We don’t want to yell too much and alert the neighbors,” Dylan cautioned. “If we don’t locate him soon I’ll call the marshals and they can bring in the local police again if they think it’s necessary.”
She clamped a trembling hand around his wrist. “I think it’s necessary now.”
“Maybe he just took off like he did this morning. It’s certainly possible.”
“He wouldn’t dare do that again.” The moment the statement was out of her mouth, Grace realized she was wrong. If Kyle did it once, he’d do it twice. Besides, she’d been so concerned about Dylan’s possible injuries she’d failed to discipline the boy adequately, either at the accident scene or later, at home. It was no wonder Kyle didn’t respect her when she was so lax about holding him responsible for his misbehavior.
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